


Like a Second Heart

by Who_Needs_Reality



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hallucinations, I'm serious this is literally just angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 23:08:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14862059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_Needs_Reality/pseuds/Who_Needs_Reality
Summary: She’s hardly surprised, the first few times it happens. The hallucinations are vivid, but not long, not much, just short, staccato bursts of him, tiny pieces to keep her going -- his hand extended out to her to help her up from the rubble, his voice a soothing murmur in her ear telling her she’ll be alright until she finds water… of course she sees him, of course she hears him. It’s Bellamy -- who else would her mind conjure up to help her survive? There are worse symptoms praimfaya has left her with than a few too-real imaginings of her best friend after all.{Clarke's not worried when she starts to hallucinate Bellamy. It's only when the dreams continue to haunt her even after the real Bellamy comes back that she's concerned}





	Like a Second Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this might require a quick bit of context: basically, I haven't actually been keeping up with the new season. I've been absolutely swamped with uni stuff and have exams coming up really soon, and between that and a combination of some not so fun mental health stuff, so I haven't had a lot of time. I was keeping up with the season vicariously on social media for a while, but with all my irl grievances it got to the point where finding out about certain relationships or character arcs happening in S5 that I disliked was just hitting me so much harder than is reasonable for a TV show. I really do need my TV experience to be fun and not anxiety-inducing just now, plus I know so many people have been loving the new season and I felt like I was dragging people down because of my personal baggage, so I decided to cut myself off from canon for a while. I haven't seen any S5 episodes, I haven't read any S5 fic, and I have avoided twitter or anywhere else I might accidentally find out more things about S5 that make me miserable lmao. 
> 
> For all my best efforts, I was STILL dealing with some residual angsty feels so I bashed this drabble out in an hour mainly as catharsis for myself. I do feel better having written it, but be aware that it probably sucks and might not actually make sense for canon because these days, idk a The 100. But...yay catharsis.
> 
> ANYWAY without further ado, I hope you like my latest angst fest.
> 
> Title comes from the quote “The past beats inside me like a second heart,” from John Banville's "The Sea."

>   _“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”_
> 
> \-- Haruki Murakami, _Kafka on the Shore_

 

She’s hardly surprised, the first few times it happens. The hallucinations are vivid, but not long, not much, just short, staccato bursts of him, tiny pieces to keep her going -- his hand extended out to her to help her up from the rubble, his voice a soothing murmur in her ear telling her she’ll be alright until she finds water… of course she sees him, of course she hears him. It’s Bellamy -- who else would her mind conjure up to help her survive? There are worse symptoms praimfaya has left her with than a few too-real imaginings of her best friend after all.

*

It’s a little more worrying when she sees him after finding Madi. She’s not alone any more; it shouldn’t still be happening. But here he is -- or rather, here he _isn’t_ \-- leaning against a tree and cocking his head to the side, watching Clarke crouch over Madi’s sleeping form.

“Clarke Griffin with a kid,” he says, “now there’s something I thought I’d never see.”

“Really?” she asks, too tired to ask him why he’s there. “And why not?”

“Well,” he smirks. “Maybe I could have seen it. Guess I just always imagined it’d be with _my_ kid.” He winks at her.

She wishes it didn’t make her stomach turn somersaults like they’re teenagers on a first date. This, if anything, is proof he isn’t real -- this picture of him standing there grinning like he hasn’t a care in the world, of him winking and laughing and flirting with her so easily, like nothing can touch them. They’ve never had that luxury; they never will. Not really.

But then she _knows_ it isn’t real. Where’s the harm in letting herself play make-believe, just for a little?

“You wish,” she tells him, rolling her eyes, and he laughs and says yes, yes he does.

 

*

After that, it’s the dreams. The dreams are worse because she can feel him. Not the full weight and warmth of him like she could in real life, but enough. The shadow of warmth, the memory of touch. It’s there in her dreams and she craves it, falls into the brush of his hands and the solidity of his chest like a starving man on a feast.

And then she’ll wake up, gasping like the air’s being torn from her lungs with the shock of finding herself alone. She’s glad she has Madi next to her, glad the girl never seems to mind the nights when Clarke has to cling to her a little tighter than usual, reminding herself that she’s not alone, not completely.

She starts telling Madi stories too. Not exactly as they happened, not with all the ugliest parts left in, but enough. Clarke’s always been an artist, and the pictures she paints for Madi are like sketches drawn with words, all soft charcoal and no hard edges, but enough that the main outlines and overall shapes are there.

“She loves hearing about you,” Clarke tells Bellamy, the _real_ Bellamy, into the radio. “I think she knows you’re my favourite.”

“And you’re mine, Princess,” Bellamy, the imaginary Bellamy, tells her.

Clarke grits her teeth and continues speaking into the radio. “It’s been two years,” she says, “I hope you guys are doing good. I hope the algae farm’s up and running. I’ll be here, waiting. Come home.”

“I am home,” says Bellamy, coming to crouch beside her, and god it hurts to look at him, look at him like _this_ when he’s never looked more real, when the teasing smirk has melted away and his voice is soft and his breath is near and--

“Brave princess,” he whispers, and she closes her eyes, trying to force him out, but it doesn’t work. She can still see him, he’s in her head. “Trying to do this alone. But you don’t have to, Clarke. I’m here. I’ll always be here.”

She keeps calling on the radio, reminding herself that Bellamy, _her_ Bellamy, the real thing is out there. But he never replies, he never answers.

The other Bellamy does though. He’s always there, when she’s dreaming, when she’s awake. He never leaves.

 

*

At first, she thinks she’s imagining him again -- it wouldn’t be the first time her mind has conjured up a vision of him walking towards her like some sort of balm to soothe her when she’s hurting. She almost doesn’t react. And then she sees him, really _sees_ him.

He has a beard.

A _beard_.

She’s managed him a hundred ways -- his hair loose and curly, or matted with sweat. Eyes dancing with laughter and firelight, or soft with sadness, with understanding. His face clean and happy, or tender with blood and bruises.

But never with a beard.

It’s that one detail that does it, sends her scrambling to sit upright and take the rest of him, to realise with gasp that she can feel him, really feel him, when he goes to help her up, that he’s staring at her, joyous and disbelieving.

“It’s really you,” she breathes, the tears already coming, and then he’s hugging her, and she clings to him, closer, closer, and he’s _real_.

That’s what she tells the Bellamy who appears again in her dreams that night. It’s the lightest her chest has felt while looking at him in a long time.

“You can go now,” she says, squeezing the dream boy’s hand, “it’s time.”

“Oh?”

“I think I understand now. Why I kept seeing you. Why you stayed with me like this. But it’s okay now. Thank you,” she says, smiling at him, “for keeping me alive. But now you -- the real you -- you’re home for good. You’ve come back. So you -- this is confusing isn’t it? -- but I don’t need to keep imagining you any more. You’re _back_.”

The dream Bellamy looks at her, and she tries to ignore how familiar the expression is, the way he seems to be reading her without betraying what he thinks of it.

“You got this all figured out, huh?”

“Yes. Thank you for everything, really. But it’s time for you to go.”

 

*

He doesn’t go.

He’s always _there_ , wherever she turns, and she can’t stand it. He’ll linger behind Bellamy -- the real Bellamy -- or in the corner of the room, or just beside her. He never leaves her line of sight.

She tries to ignore him, she really does. Clarke clenches her jaw and grits her teeth and keeps her gaze trained studiously away from him.

She tries to focus on Bellamy, the real one whose real and tangible and _here_.

She tries, and it only makes it harder.

Because the harder she tries, the more she sees the differences.

They’re good, at first. If she had to guess she’d say he seems happier, lighter, like he’s not carrying the world on his shoulders anymore. He’s somehow more confident, too, not in that headstrong impassioned way he used to be, but self-assured, self-possessed. He’s grown, and it suits him.

But.

There’s always a _but_ , a quiet whisper that won’t let her ignore some of the  _other_ differences. No matter how hard she tries to, no matter how small and irrelevant they are she can’t help but see them.

When he smiles at her, it's distant. Not so much that anyone else might notice, not cold, perhaps not even deliberate. But it’s the way he might have smiled at some of the younger delinquents in the dropship camp all those years back. It’s a sweet, quiet smile, polite even, an assurance that everything is okay.

His eyes too have changed, she thinks. Not in colour or in shape, maybe just in the way she looks at them. But where there used to be windows that let her see right into his mind and let him look right back, where there used to be mirrors where she so often saw her own thoughts mirrored in his own, now there’s just… just eyes. His gaze is flatter, at least when it focuses on her, it looks without seeing.

“I’m growing crazy,” she tells the hallucination when he appears in her tent again, unbidden, “you’ve driven me crazy.”

“Yeah?” the imaginary Bellamy folds his arms across his chest. “And how have I done that?”

“You’re not real!” she spits at him, “I made you up in my head and you won’t go away and now I’m so used to--to this made-up  _thing_ that I can’t stop seeing. And it’s ridiculous because you’re back! The real you is back and I should be happy and instead I can’t stop comparing him to _you_!”

“Tell me something Princess,” he says and she hates him, _hates_ him for using that nickname, reminding her how the syllables sound caressed by the cadence of his voice when she knows she’ll never get to hear again it in real life, “what makes you so sure _he’s_ the one that’s real?”

“Stop it!” she claps her hands over her ears and squeezes her eyes shut, as if that’ll get rid of him, as if she can’t still see him in her mind’s eye, “stop talking like that! There is no _he_ , you’re the same person!”

“Are we?” he cocks an eyebrow, pushes forward so he’s looming over her, and she finds herself let him walk her backward even though he can’t touch her, walk until her back hits the canvas of the tent. “Are we the same?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she spits, vehement, “yes! I’m just imagining what you used to be like before Praimfaya and if you could get the fuck out of my head I could focus on who you are now!”

“Clarke?”

Her eyes fly open and Bellamy -- the real one -- is standing in the flap of her tent, brows furrowed.

“Um. Hi.” She forces herself to take a deep breath, to shove past the hallucination and act like he’s not there.

“You okay?” Bellamy asks, “I thought I heard shouting.”

“Fine,” she mutters, “just thinking out loud.”

He accepts this with a shrug, even while the Bellamy in her head scoffs and says “nice, Princess, real convincing. He seriously bought that?”

 _Shut up_ she thinks, _shut up shut up shut up_ \--

“Clarke? Did you hear what I said?”

She blinks, digs her fingernails into her palms, letting the pain force her to focus on _him_ , Bellamy with the beard and the flat stare and the cautious smile that won’t reach his eyes.

“Sorry,” she rasps out, “can you say that again?”

“Diyoza wants us to meet out front in five.”

She nods, manages a thin watery smile as he turns and leaves.

“Leave,” she whispers, too quiet for anyone outside of her head to here, “please. I can’t take it.”

 

*

The moment the dream starts, she shoves him. “I told you,” she hisses, “to _go_. Get out. Go! I don’t want to see you!”

He doesn’t so much as flinch, just grabs a hold of her wrist and forces her to look at him, his face wild with concern. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice frantic and low, “Clarke? Talk to me, please!”

It’s not real. The desperate roving of his eyes across her face, the pressure of his thumb where it rubs unconscious circles into her wrist… it’s all in her head.

“Why are you even here?” she demands. “Why are you hanging around me? You don’t need me, why are you _here_?”

“Slow down!” he begs her, “what are you _talking_ about? Of course I want to be here! There’s nowhere I’d rather be!”

“Will you shut the fuck up?!” she spits. “Stop… stop pretending. This isn’t real. Stop pretending that you… you want me or something.”

“You think I don’t want you?” his voice has dropped even lower now, and he no longer sounds concerned. Just tight. Dangerous.

 _You have someone_ !” she cries. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t just fucking _tell me_ about her but you do! You have _her_.”

She doesn’t need to clarify who she means, this Bellamy already knows.

His expression shutters. “I’ve told you, Clarke, just because _he’s_ with her doesn’t mean--”

“I’ve told _you_ ,” she cuts him off, “you have to stop! Stop acting like you’re two different people!”  
  
“Since you’re so damn set on being _logical_ , Clarke, why don’t we think this through. Who do you see when you look at me?”  
  
The question takes her off guard, even if it’s in her own head. She stares at him, at the curl of his hair and the heat of his eyes.

“My best friend,” the answer comes without having to think about it, “my favourite person.”

He smiles at that, soft and gentle. “You know me better than anyone in the world right? The same way I know you.”

She nods; her throat won’t work long enough for her to speak.

Bellamy brings his hands up to cup her face, and she has to force herself not to completely melt into the warmth of them.

“Are you trying to rub it in?” she whispers, “the fact that it might not be true anymore?”  
  
“I’m telling you that whatever happens out there, whoever  _he_ becomes… _I’m_ always going to be right here with you.”

He kisses her forehead, and she swears she feels the brush of his lips there even when she wakes up in a tent alone.

 

*

It’s not that Clarke thought she could beat Octavia, that’s not why she challenged her. But Octavia wanted to kill _Madi_ , to make a show of her power and wipe out the last nightblood. It hadn’t mattered if Clarke could win or not, she wasn’t just going to let that happen.

But it doesn’t matter now. Her challenge caused enough distraction that Madi could escape to safety. Octavia can do what she likes.

“We’ll get you out of this.”

She sits bolt upright, the tension in her spine only tautening when she realises its Bellamy. “Come to gloat?” she snarls at him.

If she’d thought the pain of the distance had hurt, nothing had stung more than the sense of betrayal. Somehow, even with the awkwardness between them, even with the sense that he didn’t look at her or care about her in quite the same way he once had… she had still believed they were a team, on some cellular level. Together. But Bellamy had been against her challenging Octavia from the start, insisted that they could  _negotiate_ for Madi’s safety. They’d fought about it, long and hard and ugly, and this is the first time she’s seen him since.

Bellamy frowns. “You think I’m glad she locked you up?”

Clarke looks away from him. “You were right. You and Raven and the others didn’t throw your lot in with me. She’ll reward your loyalty.”

“It wasn’t  _loyalty_ ,” he insists. “We stayed quiet because it was the smart choice. None of us could have helped you if she’d locked us all up for supporting a threat to her power. We can work on her now, get her to see reason--”

“I hear she maims people,” Clarke interjects, conversational, “if she wants to make an example of them.” She looked down at the floor, wondering which parts of her body Octavia might hack away at first. Her eyes? Maybe then she’ll stop seeing  _him_ wherever she looks. Her hands? Maybe then she’ll stop reaching for him in her bed every morning before she wakes up and realises she was dreaming.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” Bellamy grits out, “stop talking like we’ve already lost.”

“Not _we_ ,” she says flatly, “I.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Clarke smiles wanly. “Probably not what you had in mind, right? You finally get to be happy, take the world off your back for awhile, find a real family. And then you come back and I’m here and everything’s gone to hell and you just can’t catch a break.”

He’s staring at her now, his expression more open and blazing since it’s been since he got back.

“Don’t worry about me, Bellamy,” she says, trying honestly to be gentle, “you deserve to be happy and safe. That’s all I want. Just forget about me and let your new family take care of you.”

“ _Clarke--_ ” his tone is urgent and furious, but if there’s something he was going to say, she doesn’t hear it. Two of Octavia’s guards stride in, shoving him aside and opening her cell.

“What’s it to be?” she asks, “death by hand-to-hand combat or boiling alive? Or whatever else it is you people have been doing for six years?”  
The guard closest to her grins cruelly, hauling her to her feet, ignoring Bellamy’s shouts to _let her go you asshole_!

“Blodreina is generous,” he says. “You will be punished, and if it kills you, you die a traitor’s death. But if you survive, you will live. You will be banished, but you will live.”  
  
“And what’s my sentence?” she demands.

The guard grins when he answers. “Twenty shock lashes.”

“ _No_!” Bellamy surges to his feet, kicking and struggling against the guard who restrains him, “no that’s insane! _Clarke_!”

“Lock him up,” the guard says to his companion, and Clarke can’t help stealing a glance at him over her shoulder, urging him wholeheartedly with her eyes to stop  _struggling_ dammit and just let her go.

Octavia and all her people have assembled outside when Clarke is brought out and forced to her knees.

“Clarke Griffin,” Octavia announces, cold and cruel, “for the charge of treason and intent to depose the Queen, I sentence you to twenty strokes of the shock baton, across the back.”

Clarke refuses to flinch when Octavia glowers at her.

Octavia casts a glance around the crowd. “Let this be a lesson to you all.”

And then the first lash falls.

 

*

She knows she’s dreaming because she’s in a bed. It’s soft and comfortable, and definitely not real. Clarke sits up groggily, and as she takes in her surroundings, they become increasingly familiar. It’s Becca’s mansion, she realises, and it feels like another lifetime.

“What happened?” she asks. She knows without looking that he’ll be there.

“Octavia…” he sounds wrecked. “She had you shock lashed. You passed out.”

“But I’m alive?”

He worries his lip. “For now, I think you’re just here.”

She shrugs. “I’ve survived worse.”

He makes a sound that’s probably meant to be a laugh but comes out more as a sob. “That’s supposed to make this better?”

Clarke turns around then and god, she almost crumples because he’s there, Bellamy, _her_ Bellamy, looking at her like they’re the only two people in the world. And right now, in this little pocket of space, she supposes they are.

“You’re not going to tell me to go away this time?”

She hesitates. “I should…”

He smiles. “Only you would try to be this stubborn in your own dreams, Princess.”

Clarke manages a soft laugh at that, and then feels her throat close. “Can you… would you hold me? Just for now?”

Bellamy pulls her into his arms without speaking, and she melts into his warmth, letting herself feel the beat of his heart against hers.

“I meant what I said,” she whispers, “I _do_ want you to be happy and safe and I want you to be able to move on from everything and live your life--” she stops to catch her breath. “I mean it. I mean every word. It shouldn’t hurt this much when it actually happens.”

He just rocks her gently, back and forth like a child.

“I miss you,” she whispers, she confesses, “even though you’re back. Even though I should be happy. I miss you.”

“You don’t have to,” he murmurs, “I’m here. I’ll always be right here.”

She knows it’s not real, that it’s not the same. But fuck it, this is her dream, and for now, she’s allowed to pretend it’s true.

Clarke looking up at him, drinking in the warm glow of his eyes, the tenderness of his expression, the soft curve of his smile. “I’ll miss you when I wake up.”

“Then don’t.”

She closes her eyes, lets herself bask in his imagined warmth. It’s tempting, certainly, the prospect of staying like this forever, where nothing and no one can touch them. But there’s a world out there, a real one, and Madi needs her, and Bellamy… well, that’s where he really is, isn’t it? She can’t stay dreaming forever.

Even if it’s tempting.

“I have to,” she whispers, “but… can I stay here a little longer?”

“Whatever the hell you want, Princess,” he says, and she lets herself believe, just for a moment, that that’s true.

**Author's Note:**

> Tah-dah! I hope that made some sense and people liked it. Also, I borrowed '"I'll miss you when I wake up."//"Then don't."' from The Winner's Trilogy by Marie Rutkoski 
> 
> And wrt to my opening note, please don't worry about me, I really am fine!! I made it sound a lot more dramatic than it really is (as tbf I usually do) but basically the only TV I'm up to consuming these days is Love Island (where are my #TeamNiall family at?). 
> 
> HOWEVER I will still be writing fic!! Canon and I may be on a break right now but I have three massive AU WIPs I'm working on so I hope you like enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, angst, arranged marriages, banter, angst, time travel, bookshops, assassins, angst, power couples, childhood friends, love letters, angst, and angst, because that's all headed your way soon.
> 
> If you liked this fic, plz lmk what you thought in the comments!! Until then, peace out.


End file.
